His words felt like a sudden punch in my gut, and for a moment everything in the diner seemed to stop moving. The entire world got silent and still and blood rushed through my ears until all I could hear was my own pulsing heartbeat. “Well, wasn’t it obvious?” I finally said. He raised his eyebrows. “Why else would you have asked me about the hairpin?”
“So here’s what I think happened,” Detective Charles continued. “I think Mr. Gatsby found out you were lying about the golf tour and threatened to tell your friend Daisy. Maybe he even blackmailed you. He wasn’t the nicest guy.” I frowned, remembering that last gin-soaked afternoon at the Plaza, the way Tom and Jay were going at each other, the way the Saturday before he’d threatened to destroy me. “I think Mr. Gatsby threatened to tell Daisy your secret, and you shot him.”
I closed my eyes. Inhaled. Exhaled. It was uncanny how close he was, and how far away, too. How much he didn’t understand. And how I knew that I could never make him understand. Never tell him the truth. I promised. We all did. If my lie unraveled, Catherine’s and Daisy’s would come with it. I would never let that happen, no matter how many times the detective came to talk to me.
I opened my eyes and stared at him, unflinching. “You have quite the imagination, Detective. That sounds like some kind of a crazy made-up story to me.” I pushed my pie away. “And even if it were true, you’d never prove it.”
There it was, the only truth I’d ever tell the man, clear as day. He could think what he wanted, but he’d never prove anything unless I confessed. And that would never happen. Even with the hairpin. Daisy or a hundred other women really could’ve dropped it at a party last summer.
I flashed him my best Jordan Baker tournament smile, the one I put on up on the podium when I was proud and hot and tired and longing for a past I knew I’d never have again. And then I stood, and I walked out of the diner, just like that.
On the sidewalk, it was still hot, but it was almost dusk. The orange-pink sun fell and skimmed below the sparkling Pacific Ocean in the distance. I inhaled the delicious smell of the sea air, and I walked on, toward my hotel.
Detective Frank Charles June 1923
EAST EGG
YOU’LL NEVER PROVE IT.
Certain things had come to haunt Frank over the long and winding course of his career, and he knew that last thing Jordan Baker would ever say to him would be among them.
He’d watched her walk out of the Santa Barbara diner, walk away into the warm January sunset, and dammit, he’d suddenly understood that she was right. Three women, three suspects. All of them lying to him, all of them tangled up tightly in those mangled threads of deceit. He’d never truly unravel them without a confession.
He knew it, deep in his gut, that his theory was right. He’d pictured the scene again and again in his mind: Jordan Baker standing there in the bushes by Gatsby’s pool, holding the gun the way a certain kind of careless man held his glass of whiskey. It was illegal, illicit, but consequences be damned. He could see it all so clearly; Jordan had pulled the trigger, killed Jay Gatsby. Daisy and Catherine were covering for her. And yet, if none of them were going to talk, he never would prove it.
But what Jordan didn’t know was, he didn’t necessarily need to prove it. As far as the Long Island precinct was concerned, the case was closed and had been for months. Two not-so up-and-up men dead by each other’s hands. No detectives were losing any sleep over it, except for him. He’d never arrest Jordan, charge her, bring her to trial—those were the things you needed proof for. No, all he needed to do was take what he’d found, what he knew in his gut, to Meyer Wolfsheim and collect his fifteen grand.
He had, in fact, intended to do that very thing in February, a few weeks after getting back from Santa Barbara. He’d scheduled a lunch with Wolfsheim, and they met at an underground place of Wolfsheim’s, down by the docks. The booze was freely flowing and Wolfsheim didn’t even bother to tell him to look the other way. Wolfsheim notoriously operated by his own rules, always had. “Whiskey?” he’d simply offered Frank instead.
And why the hell not? Frank had felt nervous and broke his rule about drinking on the job. (He wasn’t technically on the job.) Then the two of them had shared a lobster lunch—the best goddamned lobster he’d ever eaten in his life and nursed a bottle of whiskey.
“So?” Wolfsheim finally said, wiping around his graying beard with his napkin. “Tell me the truth, Charles. Who did it?”
He’d left Santa Barbara with every intention of telling Wolfsheim what he’d learned about Jordan, what he knew for sure in that detective gut of his, even if he couldn’t prove it. Until last week, when something else had gone down: a handless dead man, pulled from the East River, and word was he’d worked for Wolfsheim and had betrayed him. We’ll never get enough evidence to make an arrest, Detective Lawrence, who was new to the precinct but had seen this kind of thing from Wolfsheim before in Brooklyn, had said. But that’s justice in Wolfsheim’s world.
What’s that? Frank had asked, suddenly feeling nausea swelling in his chest.
Murder. Lawrence had shrugged.
And in that moment, when Lawrence had said murder, all Frank could think about was Lizzie.
“Well?” Wolfsheim urged Frank now. “Give me the full report.”
Jordan Baker’s name sat loosely on the tip of Frank’s tongue, and part of him really wanted to say it. But then the other part of him knew what he would be unleashing if he did. No woman deserved that. And he knew he’d never be able to forgive himself if Jordan Baker turned up dead later.
“I’m sorry to tell you, Mr. Wolfsheim,” Frank finally said, clearing his throat, trying not to let his voice betray his nervousness. “But I investigated this thoroughly and it was George Wilson all along.”
Wolfsheim took a sip of his whiskey. “You’re absolutely sure, old sport? No doubt?”
“Absolutely sure,” he lied through his teeth. Wolfsheim had promised to pay him no matter what the result and he held his breath, waiting for him to take that promise back.
Wolfsheim nodded. “You know, Jay Gatsby was like a son to me. I don’t trust the police, no offense, Detective.”
“None taken,” he said. Though, really, how was he supposed to take that?
“And I just wanted to make sure Gatsby got what he deserved. Justice. Whatever that means these days.”
Frank thought about the handless man in the East River and felt the lobster rising up in his chest. He shouldn’t have eaten so much. “I don’t know,” Frank spoke softly. “I tend to think justice finds a way of working itself out. We all get what’s coming to us eventually.”
Wolfsheim chuckled a little and shook his head. Then he motioned at a waiter, who walked to the table a minute later with a briefcase. “Here’s your money, Detective, as promised.”
It all felt so illicit, Frank wasn’t sure whether to thank him or arrest him. But he knew he should take the money and get the hell out of there, before Wolfsheim changed his mind. He stood and grabbed the briefcase.
“Hey, Detective,” Wolfsheim called after him. “Stay out of trouble.”
Frank laughed a little in spite of himself. “You, too, Wolfsheim,” he called as he walked out of the speakeasy. “You too.”
* * *